


Even the Cake Was in Tiers

by counterheist



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bridal Shop, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Christmas, Derek Hale's Terrible Life, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Oblivious Mutual Pining, Pining, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5558141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“She offered me an epipen,” he continues, “for the wolfsbane. We’re getting lunch later. I think I’m going to ask her to marry me.”</i>
</p><p>Overwhelmed by wedding planning, Kira and Malia decide to tap out early and tie the knot on the sly. They recruit True Wedding Fashion Prodigy Scott McCall to prepare a Christmas Eve ceremony for them from scratch in under three weeks. Of course, to throw a bridal house full of nosy Hales off the scent Scott must pretend to be the one getting suddenly married instead.</p><p>Enter florist Allison Argent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is Not Something You Can Pretend Mountain Lions Did

**Author's Note:**

> So, some things first:
> 
> \- I stopped watching the show after 3b. When I did watch the show I thought it was pretty bad.  
> \- My sense of these characters has therefore mostly been built by reading lots of fanfiction.  
> \- I love backstory and you can’t stop me.  
> \- There will be more pairings in later chapters, including Derek/Stiles and Cora/Lydia.  
> \- This is unbetaed.

“I need your help,” Kira says mid-wince.

Scott adjusts his black waistcoat and takes two deep, calming breaths. He is anchored. He is at peace. He isn’t going to snap at Kira for dragging him into a dressing room when he’s supposed to be pulling all the ruched satin one shoulders that can come in aquamarine. By the time he’s finished tamping down the irritation, Kira already has her lower lip between her teeth. Behind her Lydia purses her own lips together, and wordlessly dares Scott to refuse.

Like Scott could ever refuse.

“We can start with colors,” he sighs, slumping back against the door. “You and Malia really need to pick one or two.” Scott nods to the dresses on the wall, and does his best not to cringe. The bright orange silky taffeta is crushed up against the electric teal charmeuse, hurting something deep inside his very soul. “Some number less than ten, anyway.”

“While that’s very true, she’s talking about something else,” Lydia cuts in. She stares Kira down for a long, drawn-out moment before huffing in impatience, and explaining it all herself.

Kira doesn’t want to get married in June. Kira doesn’t even really want to get married. “Not! No, I mean, I want to _be_ married to Malia, there isn’t anything else I want more. I want a Black Widow movie less than I want to be married to Malia, but I don’t want to _get_ married.” Kira, Lydia translates while standing barefooted in a blush strapless bra and panty set that does nothing for Scott, wants to elope.

A few scant years ago Scott’s face would have been on fire if he had been able to get this close to any girl in her delicates – let alone Lydia Martin. The little teenaged part of him that will probably never go away whines about lameness, and missed chances, and sounds suspiciously like Stiles did before his voice changed. Scott ignores his inner teenage boy, and waits for Kira to start making sense.

“But not, you know, _elope_ ,” Kira whispers. She’s right to. The walls don’t have ears at Hale Bridal, but the building does contain at least ten werewolves at any given time, and the bridesmaids floor doesn’t have soundproofed rooms. “Everyone is so excited for our wedding. _Malia_ is so excited for our wedding! I caught her looking at Pinterest yesterday, and not just at steak recipes. I can’t let them down.”

“Uh,” Scott says.

“So I need your help,” Kira beseeches.

“And your absolute secrecy,” Lydia threatens.

* * *

When he is sixteen years old Scott McCall goes into the woods at night with his best friend, and some dumb ideas about catching a murderer and finding a dead body. Two hours later Scott McCall stumbles out of the woods minus one best friend and his humanity, but plus one feral child and the county’s newest case of lycanthropy. Just as Scott and the coyote girl make their way out from the trees to the otherwise deserted highway, a silver minivan pulls over to the shoulder, and stops. Scott recognizes it from around town, and the familiarity is reassuring. When the front passenger window rolls down Talia Hale leans over the center console, and says, evenly, “hurry along, Scott. Your mother is worried about you.”

The coyote girl refuses to get into the car until Scott demonstrates that it’s safe. She then refuses to sit up on a seat.

“There are some spare clothes in the back, dear,” Talia Hale says from the driver’s seat she hasn’t left, turning her blinker on and merging back onto the empty road.

Scott’s bright red face stays a bright, bright red before, during, and after introducing the coyote girl to polar fleece and sweatpants. He fails at getting her to put them on like a regular person would, but she allows him to tie the sweatshirt around her waist and the pants around her chest in compromise. Then she starts licking at the bloody gash in Scott’s side.

Talia Hale calls Scott’s mom hands-free. Then, Stiles’ dad. Then, someone named Alan. In each conversation Talia Hale maintains the same purposeful, forceful calm. The coyote girl, once she’s satisfied with the state of Scott’s wound, grumbles, and growls, and falls asleep in the back corner of the van, legs splayed. Scott keeps his eyes forward with everything he has left in him.

* * *

This is how Scott McCall meets Malia Hale.

* * *

“I don’t think you can still call it eloping if you’re inviting almost everyone you would have invited to the wedding anyway,” Scott muses, passing Lydia a sparkling satin belt she gestures for. The sewn-in crystals will battle for attention with the beaded bodice Lydia’s already wearing, but Scott knows better than to tell her that before she realizes it herself. She holds the belt up to her waist, eyes it critically, and then wordlessly passes it back to him. Good decision. Scott doubts she’ll ever say it, but she trusts his fashion sense more than her own these days. It surprises him too. “It’s more like a—”

“Surprise wedding?” Kira finishes.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

They are hiding in Lydia’s dressing room, which is a pretty bad strategy, since Scott is supposed to be helping multiple groups right now. If a customer doesn’t start knocking on doors to find him then one of the other consultants will. Erica, he bets. Her taste for secrets rivals a shark’s for blood. And if Erica finds out, then that’s practically the same as Boyd and Isaac knowing too, and then it’s only a matter of time until one of the Hale family members finds out, and then it’s all over.

“So why did you keep this appointment if you knew you weren’t going to go through with the wedding? I mean,” Scott stumbles to correct himself, quickly, at Kira’s distressed groan, “if you’re going to have a surprise wedding instead?”

It takes months after ordering to have a custom dress ready to wear, and Lydia point blank refused to try on any of the saleable samples. She said, at the beginning of the appointment when Scott asked what Kira was looking for, that her naïve, cute days of purchasing off the rack were long over. Then she said Kira had no idea what she was looking for so they should center their search around the colors and fabrics Lydia looked best in. As she is Kira’s only bridesmaid, it is less of a self-serving plan than it sounds, albeit still self-serving.

“I have my ways,” Lydia answers. “And Kira is still getting married, ergo I still needed a new dress.” She neatly buttons up the front of her blouse, and slips back into the slim pencil skirt set on the empty chair in the corner. Kira’s still crouched up on the floor next to the chair. Scott joins her.

“Does Malia know how you feel about the original wedding?” Scott asks, slinging an arm over Kira’s shoulders as Lydia fixes her hair above them. “The one in June? Because I’m only willing to help you if ‘you’ means you and Malia together. I’m not going behind her back. She’s like a sister to me.”

Kira refuses to look him in the eye, which is always a bad sign, but she doesn’t wince again, which is a good one. Malia doesn’t know, but Kira promises to talk to her before asking Scott to do anything. Anything beyond preserving his absolute secrecy, which he swears to either way, spitting in his palm and shaking Kira’s hand as Lydia watches.

They agree to meet at the grimy trucker bar on the edge of town after Scott gets off work. None of the Hales ever go there, except maybe Peter, and Peter’s away in New York. In the meantime Scott tells Kira she has to talk to Malia, Kira tells Lydia she needs to decide on a dress, and Lydia tells Scott he needs to keep his big mouth shut.

* * *

New wolves, the ones who don’t immediately reject the bite and die in agonizing pain, have a series of classes they have to take, and tests they have to pass, before they’re allowed to go forth and be normal people again. Until that time, new wolves are required by law to confine themselves to either a secure facility provided by the county, or house arrest. Family visits have to be reported to the nearest alpha; anyone else who visits an uncertified bitten wolf is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Six days after The Night In The Woods, Scott’s mom gets a letter in the mail about a program at the nearest school for new teenage wolves. Scott steals it, and reads it in the middle of the night. Halfway through the second page, Stiles crawls in through the window behind Scott’s bed, and they read the rest together.

“Eichen House, huh?” Stiles whispershouts into Scott’s left ear. “Didn’t that place get condemned like twenty years ago? What, is their version of negative reinforcement letting the ceiling fall in on you when you don’t howl at the moon in the right key?”

Scott doesn’t want to go to Eichen House for a minimum of six weeks, maximum of eighteen months. Scott doesn’t want to be a werewolf. Scott wants to go to high school, and make first line, and feel safe in his own skin. Instead of voicing how small he feels, Scott says, “ _dude_ , speciesist,” and shoves Stiles off the bed and onto the floor. They spend the rest of the night plotting how to pass the tests without Scott having to take the classes, until Stiles has to sneak back to his own house before his dad gets home from work, finds him missing, and has to arrest him.

The best plan they come up with involves going to Talia Hale as soon as possible and begging her to train Scott herself. The second best plan involves an eHow article on meditation, and Stiles throwing things at Scott until Scott can adequately prove he won’t go around murdering people in a frothy rage when provoked.

Since Scott can’t go anywhere, Stiles drives out to the Hale house that very day. He graciously lets Scott make his own case via speakerphone, and only adds amendments when he considers them in Scott’s best interest. Or, after Stiles is tackled to the ground by a wild-eyed girl wearing pants as a shirt, when he considers the amendments too lucrative to pass up.

* * *

This is how Scott McCall spends six months of afternoons and weekends in the woods with Talia Hale and Malia the coyote girl, learning how to be a werewolf.

* * * 

Before she leaves, Lydia selects an emerald green Mikado silk number with a sweetheart neckline. Scott looks from the color swatch, to her hair, and back again, and resolutely does not ask.

Scott has one job, so far, and it does not involve anything but staying quiet while Kira figures out how Malia feels about hasty weddings.

Scott has one job, so far, and he immediately fucks it up by telling Stiles about Kira's plans the next time he sees him. In Scott’s defense, he was always going to tell Stiles right away, and Lydia and Kira should have known that. Scott and Stiles tell each other everything with a devotion that's a little like a compulsion. When Scott walks down to the sub-basement stock room at noon to see if Stiles is ready for lunch, he doesn't get past a forced casual "hey, man," before Stiles can tell something is up.

"Did Lydia say anything about me during her appointment?" Stiles asks, draped lazily across a large chair made out of boxes. He sounds curious, but not that desperate. No boxes get crushed in his scramble to stop lounging on them and give Scott a clap on the back. It's nice to see his investment in Lydia has remained at healthy levels since she last explained that they were never getting together. Ever.

The thing is, Scott is pretty good at lying to Stiles, and vice versa. How else would they be so good at playing pranks on each other? Scott and Stiles are pretty good at lying to each other, and they're also both pretty bad at figuring out they're being lied to by each other. It should be really easy for Scott to come up with something to tell Stiles that would explain the twitchy way he knows he's acting. Instead, Scott says, "Lydia?" His voice cracks, and ends on a higher note than he's been able to achieve for years.

Stiles sits back down on his box throne. He waves at Scott to take a seat on one of the box ottomans, and sets his own feet on a cardboard box interpretation of a sea turtle. "What is it?" Stiles asks. "Come on, the longer you draw this out the less time you have to tell me about all the hot fights you got to break up this morning."

"I try not to get involved in the fights," Scott counters, drawing his knees up to his chest, because he does. More blood has been shed in the bridesmaids department during his shifts than he's really comfortable with, and most of that blood was spilled from and by otherwise perfectly ordinary humans. "And Laura's gonna have your ass if she keeps hearing you talk like that."

Laura Hale, erstwhile Director of Sales and current Director of Fashion, was away in New York getting her Master’s when Scott was bitten and Malia was found. When she returned in May she treated Scott and Malia like two cousins she’d always had, and had by mere coincidence never spoken to before. She reminds Scott of his mother in a way Talia Hale never will; which is to say, while Scott likes Laura a lot, the prospect of her wrath scares the shit out of him.

Stiles laughs from his throne, and accidentally destabilizes the approximation of a turtle. The resulting clatter sounds thankfully mostly empty to Scott, who would prefer not to have to spend another Saturday unbending damaged tiaras. "Laura doesn't do her own dirty work,” Stiles says. “She'll just send Derek. I can deal with Derek. All he ever does is posture and lecture anyway.” He looks up at the ceiling and continues, louder, “once upon a time he might have tied me to a flagpole or something, sure. But the years have mellowed him into a _loser_."

Like the entire bridesmaids floor, the stockroom isn’t soundproofed. It’s useful when there’s someone down there who can hear the consultants on the upper floors asking if the store has this or that dress on hand already. When the someone down in the stockroom is Stiles, the lack of soundproofing is only useful to Mr. Hale, who can tell approximately how much of the shift Stiles actually worked by the ratio of silence to chatter, and to Stiles himself, who uses the fact that everyone else can hear him but he can’t hear them back to always have the last word. Mostly he uses this superpower to talk at Scott when Scott is busy, to ask Cora about her favorite things when he’s too far away for her to hit him, and to insult Derek when he’s too far away for _him_ to hit him.

“You know he heard that,” Scott says.

“Damn,” Stiles grins, entirely unapologetic. “Why does he even spend so much time here, it’s not like he has a job. Job. Hot fights. Draw this out. Ha! You thought you could distract me, but you forgot my attention span is like a gyroscope: it wobbles but it always comes back. You have your guilty face on, Scott. Why do you have your guilty face on?”

Scott sends Stiles a significant look. He glances up at the ceiling, and then quickly back down. “I can’t tell you.”

Stiles doesn’t get it, and then he does. “Sweet, let’s take this outside.”

They take it outside, and across town for good measure.

* * *

“She wants to _what?_ ”

“Shhh! You can’t tell anyone. Spit-shake promise!”

* * *

Stiles Stilinski is a terrible liar, and the entire town knows it. But Stiles is also resourceful, in addition to being a terrible liar. Everyone can tell when he’s lying, fine, but they usually can’t pick the truth out of the painfully awful excuses. Stiles is aware of this, and while it’s not the most impressive skill, it’s what he has to work with. For the rest of the day, when anyone asks him what he’s done now, or why he looks so guilty, he tells them Scott is pregnant and the father is Christmas. The questioners then walk slowly away, and Stiles returns to sort of doing his job, and mostly building a kingdom out of empty boxes. Scott might have super healing powers and claws, but Stiles has an Impenetrable Lie Shield and almost no shame.

Success is all about playing to your strengths.

The point is, nobody gets anything out of Stiles. None of what follows is Stiles’ fault.

* * *

Some of what follows is Stiles’ fault.

* * *

When Scott and Stiles tumble into the grimy trucker bar at the edge of town, they manage not to break anything and also to see that Lydia, Kira, and Malia have already secured a booth near the back wall. They weave through the smoke and tables, and only get their asses pinched a little on the way. Such is part of why the Hales never go to this bar: Talia Hale hates the smell of smoke, her husband hates buildings with cluttered floor plans that make escape routes difficult to follow, and Peter mostly prefers bars where the patrons will pinch his ass a lot. Laura and Cora have common sense, and quickly threw the bar over as a place of rebellion when the brighter, more exciting clubs in the former industrial district opened up. The assorted unrelated Hale pack members generally stick near the Hale family members, and the first and only time Derek tried to exercise his teenage rebellion, by going to the grimy trucker bar his mother told him to stay away from, he was shot by an anti-werewolf extremist and almost died.

All of which makes the bar a great place to talk about Hales without them overhearing.

Scott detours to the bar to get himself something to drink before sitting down. Because it’s his turn to drive Stiles has nowhere to go but the booth, and gets to feel the first wave of displeasure from Lydia all on his own. Scott would feel worse about doing that to him on purpose if he didn’t know for sure that Stiles was still a little into getting chewed out by her. They say first loves never really go away; or, for Stiles, first stalker crushes.

“What did I _tell_ you,” Scott hears Lydia furiously whisper in his direction as he asks the bartender what’s on tap. “Even someone with an _associate’s_ _degree_ ,” she hisses, “should know what the word ‘secrecy’ means.”

“Lydia is more invested in this than we are,” Malia says next, not bothering to keep her voice down. “Investment makes her mean. I don’t care that you told Stiles, and no one cares that you went to BHCC. Get me another IPA?”

By the time Scott gets to the table with a bottle for Malia and a glass for himself, the fighting has mostly died down. Kira has her head resolutely down and cushioned by her folded arms, Malia is rubbing a hand distractedly up and down Kira’s back, and Lydia and Stiles are only bickering a little bit. They quiet down some when Scott slides into the booth next to Malia.

“Scott. Watch out, man, you don’t want to sit too close to the academic dictator over here,” Stiles flinches when Lydia kicks him under the table, but continues. “You might give her the vapors.”

Some.

“I apologize for insulting your intelligence, Scott,” Lydia folds her hands neatly in her lap and looks first at Kira, and then to Scott himself, “your lesser half is not your fault.” Stiles mutters something under his breath that everyone at the table but Lydia can hear. This time, Kira kicks him. “My life has been,” Lydia pauses, “stressful. Lately. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“Apology accepted,” Scott says, and he means it. He’s terrible at holding a grudge. “So,” he turns to Malia, already halfway through her second beer. “Kira told you everything? What do you think?”

Malia lowers her bottle, and taps the lip against the edge of her chin. She’s still stroking Kira’s back reassuringly with her other hand. It still surprises Scott sometimes how soft she can be, which is dumb. She’ll always be his coyote girl, but he knows she’s been more than a coyote girl for years. “I think we should have agreed on this sooner,” Malia says, fidgeting with the buttons on her uniform shirt. Kira must have picked her up from the Ranger station after her shift and dragged her directly to the bar, if Malia is still wearing her uniform. Scott knows Malia hates it because it’s a button down, and she finds button downs constricting, and buttons more trouble than they’re worth. “I don’t care about the ceremony, or the colors, or any of the other stupid human traditions. I just want Kira.”

Kira peeks out from between her arms, and finally speaks. “And Pinterest?”

“Laura made one for me with cake pictures,” Malia says easily, “I like looking at cake.”

“I like looking at you,” Kira says, sitting up, and okay. Right. This has been useful in terms of getting Kira and Malia’s future marriage off to good start with clear, open communication, but they still have a lot of planning to do and it’s still a little weird for Scott to watch his first kiss make out with his first girlfriend. Especially as his soul brother and his second girlfriend look on.

Lydia clears her throat pointedly. “Now that that’s settled, if you two would agree on some core details the rest of us can get this wedding moving along quickly.”

* * *

Christmas Eve.

Red and green.

No telling anyone until the day before.

* * *

On her seventeenth birthday Lydia Martin is abducted by a group who believe a banshee made to scream for the first time under very specific circumstances can usher in the end of the world. When Lydia emerges from the Beacon Hills Wildlife Preserve six days later, naked and alone, she refuses to discuss what happened to her. It takes weeks for the werewolves on the Sheriff’s Department’s special search and rescue squad to find the bodies of Lydia’s captors. Even before they do, Lydia traverses the entire length of the Beacon Hills High social food chain, and goes from obvious prom queen to complete pariah in record time. The captain of the lacrosse team won’t answer her texts, her best friends refuse to visit, and no one looks her in the eyes when she walks through the halls. The thing that gets to her the most is the way no one looks her in the eyes.

Lydia refuses to talk to the guidance counselor, and not just because Mme. Morrell is a druid, but also because Mme. Morrell is impossible to read, and therefore impossible to trust. She lies about how school is going to her parents, her teachers. She stops caring about the image she’s spent nearly two years building. She does all her homework, easily, and doesn’t skip a single class. Her teachers hail the remarkable boost in her grades as a sign that she has risen from the ashes of trauma to new heights.

But Lydia isn’t a phoenix.

Lydia is a banshee.

And sometimes she drives out to the field behind the high school in the middle of the night, and sits on the very top row of the bleachers, and screams until she cries in frustration.

Two weeks before prom, someone else screams back. Or, someone else uses the lacrosse field to get in some secret extra practice, goes to wash up in the locker room, returns to investigate the loud noises, hears Lydia, screams in fright, and falls off the bleachers.

* * *

This is how Lydia Martin, crazy naked woods girl, meets Kira Yukimura, weirdo teacher’s kid.

Later, Lydia will tell exactly no one that she considers Kira her first and best friend, but it will still be true.

* * *

Scott assumes Lydia will split planning duties evenly between him, and her, and Stiles. It’s already the evening of December 9th; they have just over two weeks to put together an entire wedding by themselves. The whole point of rushing things is to take all the stress off of Kira and Malia, so all the happy couple will have to do is taste some food, pick out dresses, and wait. Scott assumes he’ll get saddled with the dress component, maybe some of the decorations, so Scott is surprised when Lydia tells him he is responsible for the flowers, and only the flowers.

“Remember, red and green,” Lydia says after Kira and Malia have headed out for the night. “Don’t let anyone try to shove white flowers on you for the holidays. I can handle the cliché of a red and green Christmas ceremony, but I refuse to let Kira’s wedding look like some kind of European flag. And you,” she turns on Stiles, “pictures and interference. And _total secrecy_. I will have your dick if you talk about this to anyone and ruin it.”

Stiles smiles darkly, and grabs Lydia’s hands between his over the table. “I always hoped you’d have my dick one day,” he says. “Always hoped you’d have it while it was still attached to my body, but if I fuck this up and you cut it off, inner teen me will still say it counts.”

“Does your internal teenager sound like me?” Scott interrupts. “Because mine sounds like you when you were thirteen, maybe.”

“Now that you mention it—”

Lydia leaves, taking the rest of the wedding responsibilities and most of the table’s maturity with her.

The next morning, Scott stares at his ceiling when he wakes up instead of getting out of bed. He has two days off before he has to go back to work, and exactly two weeks to go until Christmas Eve. He needs to get the flowers for the ceremony and reception locked down as soon as possible. Scott considers his choices.

Beacon Hills has three places to buy flowers.

There’s the flower counter in the Safeway on Third Street, which does a brisk trade in corsages during prom season and simple bouquets during major holidays, but nothing much more complicated than that. They’d be the cheapest option for a surprise wedding where neither bride cares much about the decorations, and they’re sure to have plenty of red flowers this close to Christmas. At the same time, as Scott doesn’t particularly want Lydia to flay him alive, he strikes Safeway from his options list.

Mrs. And Mrs. Baker own Beacon Floral, and have for over fifty years. They live in a cramped apartment above their shop, and like to throw things out the window onto the heads of people they don’t like. Sometimes they throw soft things onto the heads of people they do like. Half the town loves them, half the town hates them, and the tie-breaking tourists are never really sure. Talia Hale has an informal agreement with them. Anyone who makes a purchase at Hale Bridal is politely nudged in the direction of Beacon Floral for all their wedding arrangement needs, and anyone who buys flowers at Beacon Floral for any reason at all is told to get over to Hale Bridal on pain of having something heavy dropped on top of their head the next time they dare walk past Beacon Floral.

Mrs. and Mrs. Baker’s unabashed fondness for Talia Hale apparently stems from something involving a fairy ring and a naked moonlight stroll during the late seventies, but Talia Hale only laughs when anyone asks. When she walks past Beacon Floral, a soft rain of flower petals gracefully cascades down around her shoulders. Sometimes the Bakers whistle.

If Scott tries to place a rush order with the Bakers they’ll definitely be able to fill it, because they’re witches with plenty of resources and have never, in over fifty years, run out of flowers. Plus, everyone in town knows Scott’s history with the Hale pack. Even if he doesn’t have the name like she does, he, like Malia, is an honorary member of the family. Mrs. and Mrs. Baker probably wouldn’t even charge if they knew their flowers were going towards Malia Hale’s wedding. They’d probably put a curse on whoever bought the flowers for Malia Hale’s wedding if those flowers were purchased somewhere else.

At the same time, if Scott tries to place a rush order with the Bakers, Talia Hale will know about it within the hour. That can’t happen.

The only choice left is Marguerite.

Scott has never been to Marguerite. As soon as it opened in the spring of his senior year of high school, Talia Hale declared that no one in the pack was allowed to go there alone, and none of the minors in the pack were allowed to go without an adult. Scott thought about getting Laura or Derek to take him when it came time for prom, but then Safeway was cheaper and he forgot all about it. Now that he thinks about it, Talia never did raise the buddy system restriction on it. He thinks about calling and placing his orders over the phone, since the only other pack member he can ask to go with him in person is Malia and they promised to leave her and Kira out of the details. Calling feels like cheating, though, and the core of him knows it will worry Talia just the same as going there alone would.

But Marguerite is the only choice left.

But.

But Stiles is Scott’s soul brother, which makes Stiles essentially part of the Hale pack via soul connection, which means as soon as Stiles gets off work he and Scott can go to Marguerite and buy up all their red flowers for Christmas Eve, and Scott won’t break any pack rules.

* * *

_i need you 2 go w me to get flowers 2nite._

_k. stake it out first tho, i hear the owners are packin._

_?_

_heat._

_???_

_need to know if I need to borrow some kevlar._

_??!?_

_dude look up ‘argent family’ . meet you at the apt at 5:15._

* * *

Until the early 2000s, the Argent family belonged to the world’s most prominent anti-werewolf organizations: the Hunters. According to their sparse section on the Hunter Wikipedia page, the Argent family tracked and killed werewolves for hundreds of years; long before most people knew werewolves even existed. And then, in 2006, the new head of the family renounced the Hunters and effectively removed the family from the media spotlight.

The article doesn’t explain how the Argents chose Beacon Hills to settle in, or what they were doing in the seven years before they did, or why they set up a flower shop. It also doesn’t mention if A. Argent renounced killing werewolves, or just the Hunters as a group, in 2006. Scott really wishes it did for his own peace of mind, and also his peace of body.

He sends a text to his mother telling her he loves her, and also might be in need of some antidote-grade wolfsbane later. Then he gets dressed, eats breakfast, and sets off to retake the title of King of Stupid Ideas from his best friend.

* * *

Marguerite has a dark purple awning, which covers shelves and shelves of fresh cut flowers and smaller potted plants. The shop door is old wood, painted white, and the building is red brick to match all the other buildings on the street. The secondhand book store directly across from Marguerite has grimy windows, and uses some kind of carpet freshener that makes Scott want to sneeze his brains out, but he loiters by their free books bin and manfully tries to wait it out. Going in to Marguerite alone is out of the question, standing on the same side of the street as it is in the grey zone. Spying from inside the shop across the street is perfectly acceptable, and also minimizes the chances of Scott getting shot mid-stakeout. His mom has already texted him back to tell him she was unaware werewolves were psychic, but if he is he can read his own future and find out how to avoid trouble. Scott takes that for what it is: a warning that she will kill him if he knowingly runs into danger. Again. Scott and danger don’t have a very good track record.

Although Marguerite hasn’t done anything dangerous yet, aside from have no customers in the hour Scott’s been watching it. There have been plenty of passersby along both sides of the street, and one or two have even lingered to sniff the sidewalk displays. None of them walked through the white wooden door, though, which can’t be good for business. It seems the flower-buying population of Beacon Hills are more scared of Mrs. and Mrs. Baker than Scott originally thought. That, or everybody but Scott already knows about the Argents being crazy murder extremists.

Scott picks up another paperback, and pretends to read the summary, before setting it down again. His sinuses burn, he’s jumpy, and he’s got a time limit. Maybe he can work out a deal with the Bakers, somehow. This, he decides, is a waste of time.

“Oh,” says a voice to his right, “can you hand me that book on perennials?”

It takes Scott a couple seconds to see it, because he looks for a book with flowers on the cover and it’s actually only bound in a scuffed tan. He grabs it, and turns, and then forgets to breathe a little bit.

“Thanks,” she says, taking the book from him before he can drop it at her feet like an idiot or one big dog joke. In her arms are two other books, both of which do have flowers on their covers. Just as Scott realizes he’s staring, she asks, “are you okay?”

“I. Yes?” It comes out like a question. “Sorry, I. I’m Scott.”

“Allison,” she says. It’s a beautiful name, and Scott has the sudden overwhelming urge to write it in cursive inside a heart. Allison steps back, rocks onto her heels, and then rocks back the other way. Her hair is extremely glossy, and she smells so much better than the carpet freshener. “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been staring across the street for a while. Do you need to buy some flowers?”

“I,” Scott says. He almost finishes with ‘love you’, and then ‘love your jacket’, and then ‘want to smell you’, but has the presence of mind to know those are all very bad decisions. Her hair is so, so glossy. But Scott is twenty-five years old, and he can deal with this. He is his own anchor. He promised his mom he would be his own anchor, and even though his mom is a little bit his anchor too, along with his cobbled-together, unrelated family, Scott has mostly not broken that promise. “Yes?”

Allison quirks her lips into the cutest smile Scott has ever seen in his entire life. She has dimples for _days_. “You’re in luck then, Scott,” she says, like his name said by her voice isn’t a revelation. “Because there’s a flower shop right across the street, and I know for a fact they’re open.”

“I can’t,” Scott says, before he can stop himself.

The dimples go away, and Scott hates himself for making that happen. “Another loyal Beacon Floral customer?” Allison asks, disappointed. She turns to leave, and that is exactly what Scott doesn’t want to happen. He reaches out to try and grab her shoulder, and then realizes that he has no business grabbing her shoulder, and then hits the corner of the free books bin. The free books bin remains upright; Scott does not.

The carpet smells even worse from up close, but not bad enough to stop Scott from silently admiring Allison’s shoes and then taking a little nap.

He wakes up on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, and for a second he doesn’t understand how he got there. Then a very pretty face leans over into his line of sight, and he remembers Allison. Outside the bookstore she is no less pretty than she was inside it, but Scott now feels less like writing heartfelt, but objectively bad, poetry about her eyes.

“Are you feeling any better?” Allison says. “I got you out of there as soon as I could.”

Scott’s head feels clearer and cleaner, and he sits up without any problems. There are a few people staring at him on the ground, and Allison kneeling next to him, but he’s rapidly becoming more concerned about the high chance that he was just poisoned.

“I knew there had to be a reason that place smelled so much like freesia.” Allison’s dark tone sends a thrill down Scott’s spine, but it feels like regular interest. Probably. Scott should probably get a second opinion before he asks her out on a date, but at least he feels less like jumping straight to asking her to marry him.

“Did you get the license plate from that truck?” he asks, rubbing the back of his head.

Allison doesn’t laugh. “And I even called the police,” she says, and oh damn.

Two minutes later Deputy Parrish steps out of the driver’s side of his cruiser, takes one look at Scott, and sighs. “Why does it always have to be you two?” he asks. That is entirely unfair. Sometimes Scott and Stiles result in calls to the police independently of each other.

“Stiles isn’t here,” Scott says.

“Right,” Deputy Parrish says with blatant disbelief. He then nods at Allison, who hasn’t left Scott yet even though she keeps sending dirty looks back at the bookstore. “Are you the woman who called about a potential hate crime? Miss Argent?”

“Yes,” Allison Argent says, “but I also asked for an ambulance.”

Oh, damn.

* * *

When she is eleven Allison Argent’s dad bundles her up in the middle of the night, and takes her to a hotel. He tells her to get some rest, and not to take the chain off the door for anyone unless it’s him, and he says their code word. Then he asks her to pick the very best code word she can.

Allison picks ‘fletching’ because she had archery practice that day after school, and she thinks fletching is pretty.

Then Allison goes to sleep.

Then Chris Argent drives to the nearest police station, and provides the authorities with enough evidence to get his father and sister handed several consecutive life sentences. He gives addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, and names; in exchange, the police promise to protect his daughter.

A few months later, when she turns twelve, most of Allison’s close family dies in a mysterious accident even as the province begins putting together a case against them, which includes multiple counts of arson and murder. Her aunt accidentally dies of smoke inhalation after lining a certification academy for bitten wolves with mountain ash and lighter fluid. The relative of a feral omega Allison’s mom shot in the woods when Allison was two bites Allison’s mom after she makes bail. Victoria Argent rejects the bite. When she feels the pain begin to increase with the rising moon, Victoria stabs herself with a kitchen knife.

Allison finishes the rest of primary school online.

* * *

This is how Allison Argent becomes the youngest matriarch of the Argent family in over two hundred years.

* * *

“I refuse to die for this wedding,” Stiles says on his arrival. “And I refuse to let you die for it either, Scott.”

“Why are you holding a baseball bat?” Allison asks. She’s still glaring at the bookstore. After the last hour, Scott has the feeling her anger goes beyond him, and what happened to him. She did take a short break from glaring to fetch Scott a chair, around the twenty minute mark, so he has a pretty strong feeling she hasn’t succumbed fully to her hate, but almost an entire hour of glaring at a door is a lot. It’s something Scott might expect from a Hale, not a Hale hunter. Former Hale hunter. Possible current Hale hunter?

“This baseball bat has so many protective charms on it, it would probably make you spontaneously combust if you tried to touch it with malice in your heart. So,” Stiles gives the bat a practice swing and almost breaks the side mirror off an expensive-looking roadster, “don’t do that.”

“I don’t have malice in my heart,” Allison seethes.

“Sure you don’t,” Stiles says.

“It’s justice,” Allison snaps, “because that,” she flexes her fingers unconsciously, “ _person_ , deserves everything I am imagining right now.”

“What even happened?”

“Powdered wolfsbane on the floor, covered up by some sort of obnoxious air freshener so most people wouldn’t notice it,” Allison says, clenching her jaw. “I’ve heard of the tactic before. It’s probably a strain meant to subdue a werewolf’s human judgment, or inhibitions, so the owner can blame them for destruction of property, or acting like animals, or some trash like that.”

“What jackasses,” Stiles says. “Too bad for them all you get when you take away Scott’s human half is a giant person-shaped puppy. Seriously, if you scratch his side on the day of the full moon he’ll thump his leg and everything. Want to frame the guy for tax fraud while Parrish is getting the paperwork all figured out?”

Over the course of the last hour Scott has seen Deputy Parrish drag a screaming bookstore owner out of his store, and into the back of a cruiser. He’s seen two or three crime scene techs go in and out of the store with a lot of boxes labeled ‘Evidence’, and he’s had to cancel the ambulance twice after Allison refused to believe he was fine. Scott hasn’t had to talk to his mom yet, but that’s only because he knows better than to tell her about this anywhere but in person. And now his soul brother and his— and Allison are getting chummy over what sounds a lot like revenge violence on his behalf, with a side of embarrassing stories. Scott is too tired for this.

And that’s when he remembers why he’s on the sidewalk across from Marguerite in the first place.

“Shit,” he says, “The secret.”

“The secret?” Allison repeats.

“Shit,” Stiles agrees. He picks up immediately on what Scott is trying to say, and sprints over to Deputy Parrish’s cruiser to induct him into their pact of silence with a rush spit-shake. It’s the soul connection, Scott thinks.

* * *

Deputy Parrish doesn’t call Scott’s alpha about the poisoning situation, even though he’s technically supposed to. He does look like he regrets his life choices when Stiles demands he leaves his hand alone until the spit dries, but finally lets it go when Allison suggests moving the discussion off the sidewalk.

They move the discussion inside Allison’s flower shop, which Stiles only calls an improvement after Allison promises she is very against the killing of werewolves. Nigh obsessively against the killing of werewolves. She tells them about growing up in Montreal, always having to watch her back for hunters and vengeful werewolves alike. She tells them about moving to California for university, and how her father didn’t do so well by himself, and how he relocated to be close to her, but only after an alpha agreed to accept him into her territory for supervision. She tells them about how her dad took up gardening as part of his therapy after her mother, and how Marguerite operates at a loss but she won’t let her dad pressure her into closing it.

Allison tells them a lot of very personal things in a rote, tired way, like she’s too used to having to tell complete strangers all the details of her life just to justify her presence.

Scott feels like a complete asshole just for listening. He and Stiles rush out an explanation of Kira and Malia’s wedding situation quickly, but it hardly feels like a fair emotional trade. Allison, though, takes it in stride.

“We have plenty of red flowers. In fact,” she says, leaning over the front counter, “we have more red flowers than we have any other kind. My mother’s favorite color was red. Blood red.”

Scott has nothing constructive to say to that.

“But how are you going to explain today?” Deputy Parrish finally says into the uncomfortable quiet.

“I don’t need to press charges-” Scott starts to say.

“Yes, you do,” Allison and Stiles correct him in unison.

“Just tell Mrs. Hale you got really into reading those secondhand books, and that’s why you were in there for over an hour and got wolfsbane roofied so bad you collapsed. Leave out the part with Allison being there and talking to you and dragging you out, which I personally still find a _little_ suspicious.” Stiles points the baseball bat at Allison. He lowers it at her unimpressed stare.

“I still need to get Christmas presents for my father, and I thought I should support a neighboring business. Especially one that hadn’t challenged any of our permits, or asked us to leave when we moved in.” She picks up some scissors and begins aggressively deadheading some kind of shrub on the windowsill next to the register. A lot of what Allison does is aggressive, Scott decides, but it doesn’t put him off. She’s had to deal with a lot of shit in her life that had nothing to do with her, and he respects her coping mechanism, even if it’s a little more Batman than Superman and no offense to his soul brother, but Scott always thought Batman was a little bit crazy.

Maybe also Scott has a thing for aggressive women, just like Stiles has a thing for people who are mean to him. He resolves to bring it up at their next Grown Up Successful Adult Person Blanket Fort Night, before the pillow pile but after the first few hours of Mario Kart.

“I should have known,” Allison continues, “the only people who are ever nice to us are the crazy werewolf haters who think we agree with them.”

Stiles leans forward in his chair. “And not to doubt you, but do y-.” Allison cuts off an entire branch in a single, fluid movement. “Okay then.”

* * *

Allison offers to let them use the back room at Marguerite for the next thirteen days of wedding planning. Immediately beforehand, she absolutely refuses to meet in secret at the grimy trucker bar on the outskirts of town. Deputy Parrish – whose first name is Jordan, who knew? – agrees with her. Apparently he feels as strongly about emergency exits as Mr. Hale does. Allison mentions offhandedly that dive bars have too many lowlifes, and she’s trying to cut back on starting fights even though she only starts them when she’s right.

Scott almost mentions offhandedly that Allison’s hair is very dark, and very pretty, but doesn’t. He is mostly sure there is no wolfsbane on the premises, but he’ll send Stiles snooping later just to make sure. Or, he’ll ask after they leave, because Stiles spent way too long ‘finding the bathroom’ to have just been finding the bathroom.

They place an order for all the red roses Allison has, along with all the red carnations, red gerbera daisies, and red amaryllises. Stiles tries to order poinsettias, and Scott and Allison stop him in tandem, which is just one possible indicator they’re meant to be together forever. Or something.

Wolfsbane search.

Scott really hopes Stiles did a wolfsbane search.

“So we’re done, right?” Jordan asks, sitting exactly perpendicular to the floor. His posture is so good it hurts to look at. “Scott’s job was to secure flowers, and Miss Argent has agreed to provide them.”

“As long as he pays for them, yes,” Allison agrees.

Oh right, Scott thinks. That part.

* * *

“Stiles should have my credit card details,” Lydia says over the phone. “Charge away. It’s linked to my father’s account, and he still feels guilty about my childhood.” Before Scott can hang up, Lydia also says, “so who else did you tell? And don’t you dare lie to me, Scott McCall,” and Scott remembers, again, why he is so scared of someone so much shorter than him.

“Just Deputy Parrish,” Scott says. He tries to get Lydia off speakerphone before she verbally tears him in two, but his hands are sweaty and his phone refuses to cooperate. “And Allison. Argent. And they promised to keep the promise!”

“Except I said that before you said you were going to press charges,” Jordan interrupts. “I have to tell your alpha. It’s the law.”

“Or,” Stiles says, “you tell her that Scott had a thing, and that we want to tell her about it, and then we lie to her face instead of you because we’re probably better at it, and you specifically only talk about what went down in the bookstore in your report. Agreed? Agreed. Don’t look so down, buddy,” he claps Scott on the back, “I have the beginnings of a plan stirring in my mind.”

* * *

Stiles’ plan, which he explains on the drive in to work the next day, is for Scott and Allison to pretend to have a whirlwind romance, culminating in a rushed Christmas Eve wedding.

“It explains why you were skulking around in the weird werewolf-hater neighborhood. Werewolf haters plus Allison and her dad, sorry,” Stiles hunkers down in his seat, and taps out a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel, but looks much less sorry than he did when Allison was there to threaten him. “It takes the focus off Malia and Kira, since they’re supposed to be taking the plunge six whole months from now. No one will think it’s going to last anyway, you and Allison, so they won’t get you anything good and then get mad when they have to return it. Plus, Allison says her dad hasn’t shot at anything that’s still alive since she was, like, ten.”

Scott wants to like this plan, and think it will work, but it sounds a little overdone and way too complicated for something that’s going to function in real life. Sort of like half the dresses that are described to Scott on any given working day. And just like when he’s consulting, Scott knows better than to let impossible dreams cloud reality. “I don’t know, Stiles…”

“Look,” Stiles looks over at Scott, instead of at the road. “Your pack isn’t made up of idiots; or, not entirely, I guess there’s Isaac. Anyway. They’re going to think something’s up either way when Lydia goes in asking to get dresses tailored immediately, and you’re sniffing around a flower store, and I’m telling all of them to cancel their Christmas Eve plans, and Kira looks like a guilt factory for the next two weeks. Lydia might be really discrete with the caterer, and the locations, and whoever she finds to marry them, but this is Beacon Hills. Nothing is secret unless you can pretend mountain lions did it, and this is not something you can pretend mountain lions did!”

“I just don’t think Allison is going to like this,” Scott says, after spending a moment thinking about how to blame a mountain lion for the next two weeks.

“Nah,” Stiles says, “She’s down. We talked terms and conditions yesterday. She thinks you’re cute. I told her you think she’s cute. You’re having lunch today to work out the details. Also,” he says, pulling into a parking space meant for customers. “You’re welcome.”


	2. Behavior They All Should Have Grown out of by This Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A little voice in the back of Scott’s mind tells him to use this situation to his advantage. It sounds a lot like Lydia, this time. Scott probably needs to get nicer friends. He nods to himself, and decides Derek will forgive him later. “Actually,” he says, “I do have to talk to her. I am legally required to,” he adds._
> 
>  
> 
> Scott and Stiles get to work on spreading The Lie to the pack. It doesn't go as intended.

Hale Bridal has four floors.

Because the building sits on a hill, the main entrance for customers is actually on the third level. Bridal takes up the entirety of level three. Level two splits between a larger bridesmaids department, and a smaller selection of rental tuxedos. Level one includes fittings and alterations, and the stock room. Level four includes all the offices, for the people who actually get offices, and the break room. Talia Hale’s office encompasses the entire southwest corner of the fourth floor; it also serves as her studio and sewing room. Scott has been in it plenty of times in his life, but usually to talk about bridal fashion, or education plans, or accidental deer maulings.

When Scott was in high school, while Laura was still in New York getting her Master’s, Talia had an assistant who sat at a desk in front of her office. When Laura came back and focused more on the business side of things, Talia could devote her time back to design. When the assistant left to move to a bigger city, Talia never bothered to hire another. She kept the desk, though, either as a daily reminder to herself that one day she might want an assistant again, or as a barrier against people who would disturb her. No one knows for sure.

The desk sat empty for over a year until around the time Scott graduated from BHCC, although the two events weren’t related. When Scott got his Associate’s and came to work at Hale Bridal full time, Derek came back home from school.

And never really left.

He doesn’t have an actual job at Hale Bridal, or any actual job that Scott knows of anywhere else. But Derek took over the desk in front of his mother’s office on his first day back in town, and four years later he still keeps his stuff there during the day. He works pretty effectively as a barrier against the people who would try to disturb his mother, because of his resting face, and he eventually learned how to use Microsoft Outlook well enough to remind his mother when she has a meeting.

Derek tends to wander into the shop in the mid-morning, around ten, but sometimes he’s there bright and early just like everyone else. This turns out to be one of those early mornings, Scott finds, after he and Stiles separate at the stairwell, and Scott walks up to Talia’s office by himself. He’s not sure whether to consider that an advantage or not.

“Scott,” Derek says before Scott has even pushed the fourth floor door open.

“Hey, morning,” Scott says once he’s made it down the hall.

Derek’s wearing all consultant black today, a nice button down and slacks, which means someone must have blackmailed him into covering a shift. Back when Laura was the Director of Sales she would routinely drag Derek down to the lower floors whenever she needed extra help, no matter what he was doing or wearing before she grabbed him. After one too many incidents with brides-to-be with wandering hands, Derek dug his claws in and stopped helping on the Sales floors unless coerced with the threat of his mother learning things he does not want his mother to know.

“Someone wanted the day off?” Scott asks, nodding at Derek. He even has a matching black tie. He _shaved_. Scott wonders what secret’s being held over Derek’s head now, and if he can get someone to tell him. It’d be nice to get someone to cover his shifts after the wedding goes down. Scott can already tell he’s going to need to sleep for days, after.

“No,” Derek winces, a taller, grumpier version of Kira. Sometimes Scott forgets how close they are, and then Derek goes and does a Kira wince, or Kira goes and does a Derek backflip, and Scott remembers. “Mom wanted all of us to help Malia and Kira, but they refused to take separate appointments.” He takes a deep breath, and grits his teeth. “I’m assisting Laura with Kira today.”

If possible, clean-shaven Derek looks even angrier than normal Derek, who tends to look angry when he’s nervous, and also when he’s doing online Sudoku. Scott feels for him; people used to tell Scott he looked like a dope no matter what. Well, Stiles did. But sometimes people other than Stiles, too, and those people actually meant it.

“Oh cool,” Scott says, edging towards Talia’s door. “I helped out with Lydia’s bridesmaid appointment a couple days ago. It’s great they’re getting all their choices made now, and not in the future from now. Because it takes so long to have custom orders filled, and not for any other reason.” He trails off into silence. Derek’s frown has deepened with every syllable he’s said. It bypassed polite concern entirely, and is now well on its way to extreme concern, where, Scott knows, lies awkward heart-to-hearts. There’s no way he’s getting away with not having some kind of conversation with Derek to explain why he’s acting strangely.

But maybe that can be a good thing. If even Derek can tell there’s something up with Scott today, then Scott has no chance of lying – even just the littlest bit, by omission and misdirection – to Talia. And if he can’t tell the lies to Talia, then he has to tell them to someone else.

“…Scott?” Derek asks, hesitant. “Is everything okay? Mom’s in a call right now,” he gestures absently at his computer, which either means she’s skyping with a client, or just that all of her appointments live in his laptop, “but she’s free after that for a little bit, if you want to wait.”

A little voice in the back of Scott’s mind tells him to use this situation to his advantage. It sounds a lot like Lydia, this time. Scott probably needs to get nicer friends. He nods to himself, and decides Derek will forgive him later. “Actually,” he says, “I do have to talk to her. I am legally required to,” he adds.

* * *

The office Derek drags Scott into is abandoned, and soundproofed, but Scott leaves the door cracked open. At least one or two pack members are probably listening in already anyway; nothing is so exciting to the pack as all the ways Scott and Stiles almost get arrested. They’ll strain their hearing to keep listening, and Scott isn’t going to disappoint them.

He lets Derek lightly manhandle him into the ergonomic swivel chair in the middle of the room. Derek then leans himself against the desk, arms crossed. At some point midway through majoring in mollusks he lost the ability to intimidate Scott, and has been trying to get it back ever since. Mostly by glowering.

“What did he make you do this time,” Derek growls.

“He never _makes_ me do anything,” Scott says, because he has to defend his soul brother. It is pretty much the law. “And it wasn’t us this time, either. I was out looking for gifts yesterday, and I was accidentally poisoned by an anti-werewolf extremist.” He gives that a moment to sink in. “But it was all okay, because I met this girl after!” Scott tries to make his eyes starry, like he used to get when Kira smiled at him. From Derek’s horrified expression he expects it’s working. “She offered me an epipen,” he continues, “for the wolfsbane. We’re getting lunch later. I think I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Derek gapes.

Scott hears Erica trip into a display from two floors up. He’s less sure about the rest of the pack forgiving him for lying to them, but it’s a little too late for misgivings. He forges on anyway. “Her name is Allison. Allison Argent.”

* * *

When he is seventeen, Derek Hale meets a girl in a French chatroom who turns out to be a twenty-six year old Canadian woman who wants to kill him. She also wants to kill his family, his friends, and all other werewolves. As it turns out, from the news searches his parents can’t completely hide from him after they find out who he’s been talking to online, Kate Argent isn’t hugely picky in how she kills her werewolves. Fire, wolfsbane, electric currents to the heart: it all works for her. Then she dies, and her obituary mentions she spent her childhood in Beacon Hills, and Derek wonders if that means she was always going to target a werewolf from Beacon Hills, or if it means he’s cursed.

Then he gets shot while trying to sneak into a bar, and spends the next decade or so convinced it’s the second one.

He goes to school out of state to try and spare his pack, but is so lonely without them he doesn’t make any lasting friends. He gets a PhD in malacology, and realizes the day before he defends his thesis that he does not, in fact, care at all about what he’s spent the last eight years studying. He graduates. He goes home.

He likes it better at home.

Even when Laura uses him to sell dresses.

* * *

This is how Derek Hale winds up thirty years old, unemployed, living with his mother, and still, thirteen years later, unable to speak French without slipping into Québécoise.

* * *

“No,” Derek says, again and again, reaching forward to grab Scott’s shoulders and shake. “Scott, _no_.”

Scott doesn’t know about the thing with Kate. He will feel very bad about this later.

* * *

The building is suspiciously quiet when Derek drags Scott back out of the empty office. He's got his right arm spread across Scott’s shoulders, right hand a firm unhappy weight grasping Scott’s upper arm. Scott couldn’t pull away if he wanted to, not without drawing from his powers and turning this into a real fight. He could take Derek if he had to do it, and he’s done it before, but he wants this lie to be as small and benign as he can keep it. Punching Derek in the face right outside Derek’s mom’s office is the fastest way to turn a mess into a maelstrom.

Derek marches them both down the hall, Scott the wayward child to Derek’s furious, disappointed authority figure. Scott tries to edge a little more space between them, partly for his pride and partly to test just how upset he’s made Derek. When Scott steps, Derek steps with him. If anything, his grip on Scott’s arm tightens. “No,” he repeats for the umpteenth time. “You have to talk to mom about this, Scott. You have to let her talk you out of this, because it’s a _mistake_.” He yanks the door to Talia’s office open and shoves Scott through.

“He wants to marry a Hunter,” Derek spits, before turning away and slamming the door behind him as he goes.

Talia Hale has three pins in her mouth, and about thirty yards of tulle fanned out in a circle around her feet. Still, she appears entirely unruffled by the disturbance made by her only son, and favorite county-appointed trainee slash prodigy slash troublemaker. She discretely transfers the pins to the magnet on her wrist, and gestures for Scott to properly enter her studio in the same fluid movement.

When Scott was a teenager he kind of wanted to be her when he grew up.

He still does.

“I can explain,” he rushes to fill the silence, before remembering that no, he really can’t. In fact, he promised a lot of people he wouldn’t. He should have asked Stiles to offer backup and then taken him up on it, is what Scott should have done. Lying to an alpha is an art the Hale children helped teach Scott when he was a teenager, but he’ll always have that deep down hankering to tell the truth. He blames his mom. “Allison isn’t a Hunter,” he tries. “And her dad isn’t one, either. Anymore.”

“Yes,” Talia says simply. She turns back to the mannequin standing in front of the windows that take up the entire south wall of her studio. “That was one of the conditions of his living here.”

Picking up a light pencil, she begins marking something on the bodice she’s begun to construct. Her sketches begin to turn into a pattern of leaves and swirls. They look important, like the sigils Scott was supposed to have memorized during his months of training when he was seventeen. It being good for new wolves to know the difference between the swirl for alliance and the incredibly similar swirl for revenge, and all. He thinks he can see a few Hale triskelia take shape near the gathered waist. This dress is probably intended for a werewolf bride, though Scott doesn’t know any female werewolves who would enjoy it. Laura would stuff it into a trash compactor, and Cora would likely slash it to pieces with her own claws. Erica would set it on fire.

The mannequin is wearing, in trade terms, a fluffy monstrosity.

Scott can’t entirely believe the marshmallow he’s looking at is something handmade by Talia Hale. There have to be fifteen yards of tulle already in the skirt’s crinoline, and then there’s the additional material on the floor. He sees several shiny bolts of ivory satin silk leaning in the corner of the room, and a few rolls of netting rest neatly on the top of Talia’s desk.

“This,” he says, “looks… nice?”

Talia laughs softly. “It doesn’t, does it?”

“No, _no_ , it’s, uh. It’s.”

“It’s all right, Scott,” Talia says, setting her pencil down. “As there isn’t much time left, I thought I should incorporate all of Malia’s requests into one draft and then pare it all down into something she would actually be willing to walk in. Now what’s this about you getting married? I didn’t think you were seeing anyone.”

Allison’s smile, Scott thinks, Allison’s smile, and how smart she is, and you are sixteen and Romeo and completely done forever, except for the part where a lot of characters die. Nobody’s going to die. Don’t think about how there isn’t much time. Don’t think about how disappointed Talia gets when you lie to her. “I’m going to propose to her in a couple hours,” he focuses his eyes on the dress, not on Talia. “I think she’s- Allison is - amazing.”

“She has always carried herself very respectfully towards me when we’ve met,” Talia remarks. “But she did have to grow up very fast. Oh, hold this for me here, would you, Scott?” She picks something small and white out of a pouch on her belt. As Scott moves closer he can identify it as a tiny, freshwater pearl. He takes the pearl and places it where Talia directs. To his surprise, she swaps her pencil for a needle and clear thread from another pouch, and begins to sew.

“I thought you were going to make this less,” he thinks about it, comes up empty, “less. Before you went further into the actual design.”

“I was, yes, but you’ve gone and gotten me worried I’m going to need to be done with this before the year ends.” She picks another pearl out of her pouch, “And there are five thousand more of these little beasts to do. I can get creative with the stitching and the over fabric to settle down the shape of the skirt later. Hold this.”

Scott feels a cold chill run through his body, not unlike the feeling of standing next to a screaming banshee. “Why would you need to be done with something for Malia so soon?”

Talia shoots Scott a look. “I might have let Malia make an appointment in the shop for this morning, but if you really think I’m letting her get married in a dress I didn’t make myself I’m going to have to insist you go to the hospital to check if that wolfsbane yesterday really did give you any lasting damage.”

“What,” Scott asks. He repeats himself for good, confused measure. “What.”

“John Stilinski called me with some interesting news yesterday afternoon.”

“I was going to tell you,” Scott says quickly. “Right now, that was why I came in to see you. I thought it would be better to do in person, and yesterday afternoon,” was confusing, a whirlwind, involved poison, “had a lot of stuff going on.” He doesn’t ask why him getting poisoned has anything to do with Malia needing a wedding dress before the end of the year. Maybe if he doesn’t bring it up again Talia will forget. And it’ll be a bonus if the custom dress is done in time anyway. Scott forgot when they were scheming that there would be things like this, things more important to family than the brides.

And now that he’s thinking about one, he can’t stop thinking about the rest. Everyone wanted to be involved in the original ceremony. They’ll feel hurt if they can’t be involved even in a small way in the new one on Christmas Eve.

Damn.

There has to be a way to give everybody some small part to play without giving up the secret. There has to be, and Scott’s going to find that way or he’ll never feel right about this.

“Scott?” Talia asks, pausing in her work, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“You should finish this dress before the twenty-fourth,” Scott says in a rush, “Uh, not for any special reason, but you should make sure you do. And I’m fine. The EMTs checked me out, and said I was good to go and everything.”

Talia sets her needle and thread aside, and stands. She puts her hands on her hips and sighs in the way only a mother really can. “So you’re perfectly fine, but Malia’s eloping and you’re going to propose to Allison less than a day after meeting her?”

“It’s not eloping if we invite you,” Scott says. Then he says, “shit.”

* * *

John Stilinski starts his call by saying, “no one’s dead, and nothing’s on fire.”

Talia Hale is too used to hearing those words from his voice. Usually they’re followed by “and I’m legally obligated to tell you my son and your beta are idiots.”

This time is a little different.

* * *

Derek is notorious for taking the elevator. His sisters have a longstanding joke that, were the shop to catch fire and the elevators to become inoperable, Derek would die of smoke inhalation on the fourth floor because he couldn’t jump out of a window in time. The only other alternative being taking the stairs is implied, but whatever. Derek’s sisters think they’re hilarious. Derek thinks they’re weird, and morbid, and weird, and the thing is he likes the thinking time.

The elevator is an old clunker built for freight and not for people. Derek and the stock hands are the only ones who use it, the store only having four stories. Sometimes Derek likes to ride up and down in the elevator, and think about things he can do with his life that don’t involve trying to figure out how to set up rules in Outlook or bothering his sisters. That’s the thing. The entire thing.

Derek is not afraid of stairs.

He is afraid of arsonists now, though, so every time his sisters trot that joke out he has to hug them, even when he’s pissed at them. Especially when he’s pissed at them. Derek has never found a way to deal with his emotions better than physicality.

And after depositing Scott in his mom’s office for a thorough dose of sanity, Derek feels he deserves the kind of catharsis a three flight stomp down the stairs can provide. The further he walks the madder he gets, and the louder the singsong muttering grows in his ears. When he finally slams the stockroom door open with a solid punch to the crash bar he is rewarded with the release of a little more of his pent up frustration, a yelping end to the singing, and the sight of Stiles Stilinski nearly faceplanting into a forklift.

“Did you just,” Stiles says with a blank, even tone, that doesn’t match the way he’s about two inches away from giving himself a black eye on the forklift’s control lever, “punch your way into this room?”

“Maybe,” Derek mutters. He lengthens his strides out of a proper stomp so he can help Stiles disentangle himself from the machinery. If Stiles somehow ran himself over because Derek startled him, Derek would never hear the end of it. Besides, just because he’s angry doesn’t mean he can’t be decent.

But. Doesn’t mean he has to be nice.

He yanks back on the collar of Stiles’s shirt and takes a vicious pleasure in the way Stiles overbalances coming back up. Once he’s fully upright again, Stiles fidgets with his shirt, and then his hair. He babbles something about cavemen. He refuses to meet Derek’s eyes. He’s trying to avoid talking about something a normal person would feel guilty about; Derek can tell.

“Just checking,” Stiles says once he’s done halfheartedly grumbling about harsh treatment. If he were really angry, Derek knows Stiles knows one shout would capture the attention of every werewolf in the store. Derek appreciates that Stiles keeps his voice down. He doesn’t want it to get back to Scott that Derek’s beaten the shit out of his childhood friend. “So. Uh. What brings the snail king to my humble do-”

Stiles dodges the sucker punch, and shoves Derek into a pile of boxes in return. Derek lets himself fall, but he grabs Stiles by the wrists and forces him to fall too. If Stiles gets a cardboard cut from all of this Derek can blame it on occupational hazards and then maybe his mom won’t get mad at him for picking fights with Stiles in the store. Apparently Derek is supposed to have grown out of that type of behavior by this point. Something about his thirties and a doctorate and becoming one with his wolf. And maybe if Stiles stopped doing things that made Derek want to punch him, Derek would have. Possibly.

“Christ, what died in your wheatgrass this morning?” Stiles stage whispers forcefully as they scuffle on the floor. Both their shirts have ridden up. Derek hopes Stiles gets cement burn on his back.

Derek grabs Stiles by the throat, even if he has to release one wrist to do it. Stiles starts to shove at any part of Derek he can, but they’re not going anywhere. Over the years there have been so many things Stiles has said and done that have made Derek angry. He’s been a bad influence on Scott, he’s taken up Scott’s time. He’s peeped on Cora in the locker room. He’s stolen Derek’s wallet _twenty-seven_ times. But none of that compares even a little to not protecting Scott from the worst fuck up imaginable, and Derek can’t hold the tirade in anymore.

“Don't you even care about him?” Derek snarls, pushing his face forward. He and Stiles are almost nose to nose now, and the fear he smells is only as strong as it was the last time he caught Stiles stealing his car. There needs to be more of it. It needs to match the fear Derek himself feels. “He’s making an enormous mistake. She's a Hunter!”

She’s an Argent.

Derek thinks about his past, and refuses to let it become Scott’s future.

“First thing,” Stiles gasps from underneath him, “fuck you, big guy. If he's making a mistake then it's his mistake to make. You don't get to judge that for him. Second thing,” he shoves at Derek’s shoulder again, “you weigh like a metric ton, dude, get the hell off me.”

The shame hits Derek equally as fast as a combination of other feelings he doesn’t want to analyze or deal with. He gets the hell off of Stiles, but stays sitting on the floor. In his time he’s found sitting is the best position to have a breakdown in. And all sources point to him having a breakdown right now, sitting in a mess on the floor of the stockroom while Stiles Stilinski awkwardly pats him on the back.

“How are you okay with this?” Derek asks quietly, staring at his hands. He hasn’t apologized for attacking Stiles yet. Probably won’t unless someone – Laura, his mom – makes him. Another thing he’s supposed to have grown out of. “In what world is Scott doing anything with an Argent okay?”

Stiles clears his throat, and oozes guilt for the first time since he punched in to work.

“Look, Derek… she's not a crazy werewolf murderer, and she’s not a pedo.”

It is not the right thing to say to make Derek feel at all better. “How do you–?”

Stiles cuts him off. “I went through your computer once when I was like seventeen, and you never delete anything, which, Derek, you should probably start deleting some of that shit. It was embarrassing for me to read, and I’m not even the one who wrote it. But, anyway, I saw, and that's not the important thing here. The important thing is Allison, and how she’s not a Myspace Murderer like her aunt was.” He’s quiet then, they both are, which is rare for the two of them together in the same room. Even when it’s just the two of them alone.

It’s suspicious that it’s remained just the two of them, alone, considering Stiles isn’t the only person who works in stock. The other consultants, at least, should have barged in by now. If the others are listening in, Derek’s going to have to run off into the woods and live there until he dies. Talking about the time he almost got his whole pack killed is his least favorite thing to do, but if Laura knows someone brought it up today he knows she’s going to feel obligated to follow up.

“Everything else with Scott and Allison…,” Stiles continues, voice so painfully, exaggeratedly light, “I would think you of all people would understand the weird werewolf obsessive love at first sight thing.”

Derek responds on instinct. This conversation is old news between them. It’s easy to fall into the pattern. “That’s not actually what happens, and you know it.”

“Scott saw her, the magic happened, and now he wants to lock it down so the _magic_ can happen.” Stiles grins at his pun, and throws Derek a wink. Derek doesn’t punch the little liar, but it’s a near thing.

“How are you okay with this?” he asks.

Because even though he drives Derek insane, Stiles is the person Derek was counting on the most to prevent Scott from rushing into anything permanently stupid. Like proposing to an Argent, or even proposing to a girl he’s just met, who Derek hasn’t vetted yet. Not that Derek’s vetting skills have proven to be very –any– good, but it makes him feel better to try. And now they’re already past that point, and it’s Stiles’s fault for sure.

“Hey,” Stiles says, “you need to search deep down inside whatever approximates your soul and think about what it means that _I_ have given Scott my blessing with this. Scott is my soul brother. I would not set him up for failure.”

“Didn’t you—”

“Anymore! And that was once!” Stiles scrambles red faced up off the floor, and away from Derek’s pity party. Derek would too if he could. As it is, the best he can do is to push himself off the ground and try his best to dust off his blacks. Laura’s grown out of killing him for looking untidy in her showroom, but Derek’s really always preferred looking put together. He just pretends otherwise to piss her off.

Derek doesn’t realize he’s zoned out while adjusting his tie until Stiles is two feet away from him, asking, “You alive in there?” He pretends to bite the air in front of Stiles’s face on instinct. Stiles flinches, but doesn’t jump back, and that’s learned. “Okay, okay, Jesus, forgive me for— anyway. Just. Trust me about Allison and Scott. Tell the butterflies occupying the empty space in your head it’s werewolf love at first sight, and let it go.”

“There’s no such thing as werewolf love at first sight,” Derek grumbles, but, mysteriously, finds himself letting it go, if only just a tiny little bit. He’ll never admit it, but Stiles does have a point. If Stiles is okay with what Scott’s gotten himself into then it’s either mostly safe for Scott or a massively bad idea for everyone. Going by Stiles’s track record it’s the former, and Scott’s going to be okay. Going by Derek’s – it’s the latter. It’s the latter, and Derek only lets it go a tiny _tiny_ little bit.

It’s almost as though Stiles can smell it when his opponents concede. “You know that means you’re just a clingy loser then, right?” He begins to restack the boxes of fabric he shoved Derek into. “You popped your first proposal at fifteen. _Fifteen_. What number are you on now, five? If you can’t blame that on the werewolf thing then the only thing you can blame it on is you.”

“How do you even know about that?” Derek groans, even though he doesn’t want to find out.

“Maybe start using better passwords, buddy. Look, he’s going to have lunch with her today. Will it make you feel better to tag along?”

* * *

Scott seems shell shocked by the time Stiles finds him next, which is understandable for someone who had to toss a whole bunch of bullshit at Talia Hale and hope any of it stuck. Especially understandable for Scott; Stiles has had a front row seat to that shitshow more times than he can count and it’s never pretty. But in life, as in Warcraft, there are some battles you can’t skip over and still expect to get what you want.

“You invited him to lunch? Why?!”

There are also battles you can entirely skip over, but don’t, and then you die in the middle of them and it’s costly and embarrassing. Bringing Derek to lunch is one of these battles. Stiles might be a little self-sabotaging.

“He was distressed, okay? Shut up, I didn't know what to do. His eyes were misty. Tears were imminent. I didn't want his sisters murdering me because I led him to an Argent related meltdown. He just needs to meet Allison for like five seconds, anyway, and then he'll understand. Well, he won't understand the marriage thing—”

“Fake marriage,” Scott corrects.

“Fake marriage thing,” Stiles continues, “but he'll understand the wanting to be around her thing. He'll probably even like her if you can get her to do the violently protective thing she does.” Scott gives Stiles a look. Stiles looks right back. “What? It's why _I_ like her.”

“Why couldn't you just tell him?”

Stiles laughs at the obvious question. “Because we promised not to, numbskull, duh.”

“Right. Duh. The secret,” Scott looks away. Stiles is too busy thinking of how badly this is going to go to notice. “But.”

“But?”

“You said this lunch is for ironing out the details. How are we supposed to do that with Derek there?”

They won’t really be able to, but Stiles doesn’t let himself dwell on it. If anything it means Scott gets some more alone time with Allison to have a proper first date. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’ll distract him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks is probably a reasonable amount of time to expect the next chapter to take.
> 
> Next time: lunch with Allison, Malia and Kira try to hold on to their sanity, more Hales, and Lydia hates being out of her depth


End file.
